# How assistants receive skills and instructions > What memex tells an assistant when it connects, the ways skills are served, how a change reaches a connection, and the notices on live-state and profile notes. Page: https://docs.memex.tools/skills-over-mcp ## At connect time When an assistant connects, memex hands it a short instruction text before anything else: that it writes descriptions and tags itself; that `list_skills` returns instruction sets you have approved and `get_skill` loads one; that a note's *Sources* section is what to reread before acting on the note, and where to record what it consulted; that its writes are reviewed; and what curation it may and may not do in its role. The wording differs for agents and curators. ## How skills are served Skills are served as **tools** (`list_skills` and `get_skill`), **resources** (`memex://skill/`) and **prompts**, which some clients display as commands. The Skills page has one enable switch and opens all these access paths when a skill is turned on. The underlying API retains separate surface flags for compatibility. Six skills ship with memex and are listed first: `memex-recall`, the conventions for reading and writing this knowledge base; `memex-curation`, the curation procedure; `memex-profile`, how to find, read and maintain your profile note; `memex-docs`, this documentation; `memex-skills`, how to write, review and improve a skill; and `memex-writing`, how to write a note, while you keep it switched on. Your own served skill notes follow, newest first. The shipped skills appear on the Skills page as compact system cards; they have no note to edit. Only `memex-writing` changes with your settings, and only through its presets. ## Who is served what A skill's enable switch is one setting for the whole knowledge base: turning it off or on changes access for every connection, not just one. Narrowing a skill to a set of connections is the part that varies per connection: only the connections you choose are served it, and every other connection is served nothing for that skill. ## How a change reaches an assistant memex's transport is one request and one reply, never a stream, so it cannot push a change to an assistant mid conversation; the list reaches an assistant three ways instead. 1. At connect time, the `initialize` instructions name exactly what that connection is served. 2. The `list_skills` tool description carries the same list, so a client that keeps tool descriptions in context for the session already has it without calling anything. 3. Every tool result, including a failed load, carries a short `skills_version`; when it differs from the one that connection last saw, including a change to a description, the same result also carries `skills_changed`, the served list in one line. So the next call after you change something is where the assistant learns of it, never sooner. ## memex-writing `memex-writing` reaches assistants the same way. While it is on, the `initialize` text carries a short paragraph, *Writing notes*, telling the assistant to load it before it writes or edits a note and that what you ask comes first; `memex-recall` says the same in one line, and the description of `propose` ends with it. The first tool result after you change a preset or the switch carries `personalization_changed` once: load the skill again, or, when you switched it off, that it no longer applies. Off, none of these pointers is sent. ## live-state `live-state` works only through `get`: the reply for a note carrying that tag includes a standing instruction to correct the note if the assistant's own work changed the system it describes, by proposing a patch to the sentences that are now wrong or, failing that, a comment saying what changed. ## user-profile `user-profile` works at connect time and through `get`. The instruction text every connection receives names your profile note (or says there is none, and how to look again), and the reply for the note itself carries a reading instruction: it outranks what the assistant remembers about you, an unwritten section is unknown, the boundaries in it apply to every note written here, and a change is proposed as a small patch only when the conversation shows a line has stopped being true. A profile that is still pending gets a different instruction: it is not in force, and only there so no second profile is proposed. A note carrying both tags receives the profile instruction alone. ## Related - [How skills work](https://docs.memex.tools/how-skills-work): How a skill is served, the Skills page and a skill's panel, the built-in skills, your profile, and the three tags memex reads. - [Skills](https://docs.memex.tools/skills): Notes of instructions an assistant loads when a task matches, and how to make and manage them. - [MCP tool reference](https://docs.memex.tools/mcp-tools): How memex speaks MCP, and what each of its tools does, takes and returns. - [Your profile](https://docs.memex.tools/profile): A note about you that every connected assistant reads, so you don't explain yourself in every chat.